Change management and sales: influencing the buying decision path

Until the people that will touch a potential new solution buy-in to altering
the status quo (their policies, relationships, rules, past decisions, job
descriptions, etc), they will not make a purchase or a change: they will
continue the dysfunctional behavior through time, even when an ideal solution is
right in front of them.

Does this make sense – to keep doing what is not working, regardless of the
‘rational’ choices that would resolve a problem?

Actually, it does. Because making a purchase, or doing something different,
means

some sort of change management to ensure that the new and the old work
together

helping folks who touch the current practices be willing and able to
change.

Make no mistake: bringing anything new into an existent system - whether it’s
a purchase or an implementation – is a change management problem.

A BUYING DECISION IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

Sales, marketing automation, and the new telemarketing field, ignore the
change management aspect of what buyers must accomplish and instead focus on
figuring out how and what and to whom to push. And push we do.

Let me back track a bit. Givens:

sales manages the needs assessment and solution placement portion of the
buyer’s decision.

neither sales nor marketing go behind-the-scenes, into the
environment/culture in which the buyer lives, to help facilitate the
non-solution-focused internal political or relational issues buyers must
address to get the necessary buy-in to make a purchase.

buyers don’t know their route through the systemic decision path when
they begin to think about resolving a problem.

the time it takes buyers to get the appropriate buy-in from all who will
touch the solution is the length of the sales/change cycle. These are the
issues we come smack up against as sales folks: when buyers try to push a
solution into a group that haven’t progressed through their entire change
management path, they offer objections and time delays as they figure out
how to figure it out.

Buying Facilitation? is not sales, but it works with sales. It is a wholly
different skill set that actually shows buyers how to manage the systemic change
they will face when purchasing a solution or bringing something new in to their
status quo. It not only teaches buyers how to get the requisite buy-in so their
daily functioning won’t be compromised - managing the people, policies,
technology, and old vendor, etc. issues – but shows them how to pro-actively
manage the change that will happen once the new solution is on board.

A SOLUTION CAN’T COMPROMISE THE STATUS QUO

If the tech guy doesn’t want to outsource work; if the sales and marketing
folks are not talking to each other; if the “C” level person has a favored
vendor from 3 years ago; if there is already something in place that cost a
bundle and the buyer merely wants to tack on yet another fix – if anything
political or relational is going on internally that would compromise the system,
the buyer will not buy: they will not buy if the system itself would be at risk.

Just as you are resisting adding Buying Facilitation? to your sales model,
even though it would resolve so many of your sales issues (stops all objections,
severely shortens the sales cycle, gets the Buying Decision Team collected in
days), your buyers are resisting purchasing even though they need your solution.

Let’s figure out how to help your buyers buy. Let’s teach them how to manage
their change so you can easily place your solution. What would you need to see
from me, or know about Buying Facilitation? to know if it would be worth the
change?

Or consider purchasing
the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying
Facilitation?: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.
These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement
of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation? - the new
skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying
decisions.